In Ian Randall Wilson's first collection, HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES, his characters are driven by intense yearnings for the satisfaction of their most basic human desires. Some want intimacy, others acceptance, approval, security. All are thwarted by personal shortcomings, or the shortcomings of others, in their attempts to fulfill their longing. Here are stories of fathers and sons who cannot get along, people who use friendship merely as an avenue to career advancement, lovers for whom even sex isn't a way of communicating. Fourteen stories which "despite their restlessness," North American Review editor Robley Wilson says, "glitter with persistent hopes."
Hunger and Other Stories
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"... The frailty of human relationships and the vulnerability of grown-ups spanning a lifetime are a compelling subject." -- Uneza Akhter, DAWN, November 7, 2000.
"The series of stories has some shining moments of forceful deeply felt description." -- Javier Bernal, Semana Newspaper, October 13-19, 2000
"The writer has a way with words. . . Each picture is dark with nothingness. The language and sexual scenes makes this adult reading." -- Reba Neighbors Collins, The Sunday Oklahoman, October 8, 2000
"This amazing use of language, and clarity of description, compels the reader on." -- Patricia Gulian, Book/Mark, Fall 2000.
"Wilson pulls at our emotions and hidden desires with a wide variety of characters." -- Annie Sargent, St. Augustine Record, June 30, 2000
"The series of stories has some shining moments of forceful deeply felt description." -- Javier Bernal, Semana Newspaper, October 13-19, 2000
"The writer has a way with words. . . Each picture is dark with nothingness. The language and sexual scenes makes this adult reading." -- Reba Neighbors Collins, The Sunday Oklahoman, October 8, 2000
"This amazing use of language, and clarity of description, compels the reader on." -- Patricia Gulian, Book/Mark, Fall 2000.
"Wilson pulls at our emotions and hidden desires with a wide variety of characters." -- Annie Sargent, St. Augustine Record, June 30, 2000
From the Publisher
Ian Randall Wilson has published stories in many prestigious publications. Novelist Chuck Rosenthal said of this collection, "There is a hint of Malamud here, and Roth, where reality tilts under its own weight and becomes suddenly humorous, suddenly surreal, suddenly painful." It was that strangeness, the mix of emotions deeply felt coupled with a great facility for language that drew us to publish Wilson's first collection.
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More About the Author
Born in Germany, Ian Randall Wilson grew up in Massachusetts. He was educated at MIT, Stanford University, Loyola Marymount University and Warren Wilson College, holding advanced degrees in Communication, English and Creative Writing. His work has appeared in many journals including the North American Review, the Gettysburg Review and Puerto del Sol. He is on the fiction faculty at the UCLA Extension, and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Denise.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly written,
By
This review is from: Hunger and Other Stories (Paperback)
I loved how all of the stories seemed to tie together with the same basic human desire for intimacy in all forms. Getting a glimpse into the way other's view sex and more subtle forms of intimacy made it a very worthwhile read.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant storytelling. This has prize winner all over it,
This review is from: Hunger and Other Stories (Paperback)
The two common themes to this fourteen-story collection are (1) relationships are dark and costly; and (2) Ian Randall Wilson is a talented writer. Each one of the terrific tales deals with the path to fulfillment with the end state not always reached and when attained not always worth the price paid to achieve it. The stories are ultra dark, often depressing, especially when the audience, as this critic did, finds themselves reading a tale that could have come from their own diary. The poignant, well-written tales are loaded with depth rarely seen in short stories, turning the reader introspective pondering each story long after finishing them. HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES is a gut wrencher as relationships are explored from a menacing bottom view. The book needs a label "never read late at night (unless one desires nightmares) or when depressed", but clearly Mr. Wilson's anthology is worth reading because the collection is insightful and exciting even if Prozac is required. Harriet Klausner
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spell-Binding Collection Of Short Stories by Ian Wilson!,
By Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Hunger and Other Stories (Paperback)
I was frankly spell-bound by the sheer power of poet and short story essayist Ian Randall Wilson's prose skills as I literally devoured this book last weekend. With a wry and deft scalpel blade, he peels away the layers of skins separating the reader from his unique view of contemporary reality. One is most often reminded of a young Ann Beattie, or at times of John Cheever by Wilson's amazing use of tight and colorful language, which is then deployed to describe ordinary situations with a quite extraordinary flair. This is a collection of stories I plan to read again and again, just for the sheer pleasure of being in the company of an author whose lyrical abilities betray the poet's skill in service to a unique prose style. He uses strong imagery and a range of diverse characters to reveal an emotional and heart-felt orientation to the world he inhabits. To my mind, Wilson combines the best of descriptions with a kind of world-weary cynicism that also has undercurrents one would expect of a failed romantic, an almost schizophrenic somebody who wants and desperately needs to believe, despite all of the evidence of his own experience, that the world is still enchanted. Like Tom Robbins, Wilson's observations can be both funny and caustic, all in the same breathless phrase. These are stories of human beings caught in situations created by their own drives and urges to satisfy life's most basic hungers and desires, of men trying again and again to connect to what is most vital and important to them as individuals. Herein a wide and intimate range of emotions are revealed to the viewer in all their natural human rawness and sensitivities, and Wilson pulls no punches with happy endings or unbelievable twists or turns. Instead, the reader is invited on a busman's tour of the realities of human relations in everyday America, where protagonists cynically keep score of lovers' performances, where accomplishing goals often comes at a high price, and where the fruits of victory are often ashes in the mouths of the victors. The characters are impatient, self-absorbed, and often mean-spirited, but one still cannot help but empathize with the ways in which each is caught by the petard of their own private human frailties. Although Wilson works within the confines of a very different and distinct prose style, I was reminded by these stories of authors John Updike on one hand and Bernard Malamud on the other, and this is due to the fact that like these authors, Wilson seems able to make each of these stories funny, brutal, and surreal, and still make the situations and the characters seem believable. I believe this is the first collection of stories by a very gifted someone we are going to hear a lot more from, and I will not be surprised when Wilson soon joins the ranks of more celebrated and much more widely read authors like those mentioned above. His singular prose style and the unique way in which he colorfully approaches the human dilemma ensure him a long and successful career. This is a book I highly recommend, and I one I hope you enjoy as much as I did.
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